


you told me I was simple, and you injured me with that piece of mind

by timeladyleo



Series: baptisms [3]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 10:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21336772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: Arthur Shappey and coping methods, assorted.
Series: baptisms [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516793
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	you told me I was simple, and you injured me with that piece of mind

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I make Arthur sad so often, but I could make him suffer more, so be glad this is what I'm settling for. This was written in a hurry and isn't really proofread, so if I've made any dumb typos, please point them out, otherwise, I hope it's not too incoherent!

The worst part of it all wasn’t the shouting, he had decided. That was pretty much run of the mill, as they said. Whoever they were. That was a question that he had asked once, years ago, one that had been met with eye rolls and fond smiles. He wasn’t stupid, much as people didn’t seem to realise that, and he did know when people were humouring him. Mum had said that he just had a different way of looking at the world. He hadn’t quite managed to figure out why that was a bad thing yet. 

No, the worst bit was the word. Divorce. Arguing, he could cope with, like he was at that moment, lying on his bed, listening to Christmas songs even though it was only November, even though Dad didn’t like them at all, even though he had been really told off last year for daring to play Mariah out loud and even more so for thinking he could sing it. 

He stared out at the grey sky beyond his window. George Michael whispered about dreams in his head, and he imagined a perfectly snowy day at sunrise, red light making everything look like wrapping paper for a moment before the Earth turned on and the sun rose into a crisp blue morning. Timmy at school said that every Christmas, his sister and him went and woke their parents up, then had presents and dinner, and their whole family came around and after they played silly games and told stories and ate mince pies. 

Arthur couldn’t remember the last Christmas morning that hadn’t begun with a fight. He didn’t even try and wake anyone up first anymore, just waited until Mum said it was okay to come out. 

A flock of migrating birds flew past, shattering his illusions of a snowy wonderland. The grey of November was always the worst, just endless days of soggy leaves and gloomy skies. He searched around in his head for a word – no, a phrase. He’d learnt it once in English, it meant ‘when the weather reflects the mood of the characters. _Pathetic fallacy_! He knew he remembered it! If only there was someone who he could tell, other than Big Bear. 

He whispered it into Big Bear’s ear. Big Bear already knew he wasn’t stupid though. Big Bear knew all his best facts and stories. Dad said that Big Bear ought to go in the bin, or at least on the shelf. When Dad came in, that was where Big Bear sat, but every other time it was safe, he brought Big Bear back into the safety of bed. 

Was it selfish to be jealous of Timmy and the perfect family? Almost definitely, he thought. It wasn’t like his family was that bad, anyway. He had a Mum and a Dad which was more than some people had, and they did Christmas at all which was nice in its own way when you ignored the bad bits, which he tended to do. So what was he really complaining about? 

He curled up onto his bed, pulling Big Bear into his chest and turning his music up even louder. Why did all these songs talk about dreams and hearts? If he was a singer, his Christmas songs would be called things like ‘isn’t it wonderful that it’s snowing?’ and ‘the pretty Christmas lights’ and ‘I love turkey dinners’ and he wouldn’t talk about broken hearts at all, just how happy it all was. 

If he tried really hard, he could just about reach the world where families all liked each other, and no-one was angry with anyone else. 

Timmy floated back into his mind. He wasn’t always sure that Timmy wanted to be his friend, because sometimes when he was being slow, Timmy would say mean things. Arthur pretended to not notice that they were mean because he’d found out that if people thought you weren’t understanding their mean comments, they actually made fewer of them. It turned out that that stupid advice about bullying was true, that ignoring them made them stop, even if it just made them think you were stupid.

Maybe he didn’t always know how to react to people, but he was more perceptive than people seemed to want to think. Big Bear nodded in agreement. 

Last year Timmy’s family had sent him a Christmas card and everything, with lots of love. He liked it when people wrote that in cards, but he was never sure if people wrote it because they were meant to, or if they wrote it because they meant it. People seemed to do a lot of things just because they thought they were meant to, and that was something he hadn’t worked out yet either. 

When he did things because he thought he was meant to, it just made him sad. Maybe that explained why people weren’t happier in general. 

Another thought popped into his head, surprising him so much that he sat up. He knew exactly the tangents along which he had travelled to get to this thought, which wasn’t that impressive of a statement considering some of the twists and turns his mind sometimes did to connect things together. Where had he put it? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember, then jumped off the bed and knelt on the floor by his drawers, full of bits and bobs. 

He rummaged until his fingers brushed across the corner of the thing he was looking for, then pulled it out, trying not to let any of the pom-poms or wires spill out. 

He had forgotten that it was blue. _To a BRILLIANT Mum and Dad – Happy Anniversary!_ He had seen it not long after their last one, in May. It was perfect – it had the best word on it and it wasn’t so flowery and lovey-dovey that Dad would get cross. 

He was never ever going to be able to send this card. The thought hit him like a comedy piano falling from the sky and settled in his chest as a sinking feeling, sinking down into his stomach like a submarine heading into the dark. 

It didn’t even matter if he ruined it, not now. He clenched his fists, bending the corners of the paper and leaving little nail marks down the spine. Why was this giving him such a bad feeling? Downstairs, a door slammed, making him jump, and then the sound of the car being forced into life echoed round his head. He didn’t like to think about what Dad did when he went out. 

Looking down, he saw his hand shaking. Mum would probably come and check on him soon, and he didn’t want her to see that he’d been crying, and he definitely didn’t want her to see the card. He unplugged his headphones and tried to think fast. Songs about dreams or wishes or whatever weren’t any help now. They weren’t much help anyway, but thinking about perfect families and Christmas wishes was making his chest feel tight and his stomach feel sick. 

Somewhere in this drawer, there was… yes! A box of matches he had borrowed from downstairs and never put back. He didn’t see why he had to. He was old enough to put on a candle and make sure the house didn’t burn down. That imagining got pushed away. Things were already pretty bad without that too. 

In the back of his mind, he was aware that he hadn’t thought this plan through very hard, but he knew he needed to get rid of this stupid card, and he couldn’t put it in the bin in case anyone saw it. And this felt like a good option.

A match burst into flame, making that pleasant whoosh sound. He liked that sound. He liked the way that fire danced around, casting interesting little shadows and made the bit in the middle burn red hot. The _wick_. He knew that word too. 

And so maybe this was a less well thought out plan than he’d anticipated. As the corner of the card started to turn ashen and flaky, he realised that this was going to make a massive mess and he was going to be in massive trouble if he didn’t deal with it right now. There was a lot more smoke than he expected too, funnelling up the middle of the card, making the blue go a horrid greeny-yellow as it disintegrated. 

His only idea was to go to the window and stick his arm out. It was raining softly and he hoped this didn’t affect the fire. Not that he’d really call it a fire at all, not so much as an ember making smoke signals. He wondered how smoke signals actually worked, because you’d probably have to have quite a big fire for them, and then you’d have to know someone was watching to get your message. He was pretty sure that no-one at all was watching him right now, except maybe the evil blackbird who lived in the bush in the garden. 

He wasn’t exactly sure what his message would be, anyway. Help? Too generic, and not really what he meant at all. That was the main issue. He just wasn’t sure what he meant or what he was feeling. 

Seeing the word ‘anniversary’ melt away before him was definitely making him feel something though. 

The worst bit was, it wasn’t making him feel bad. He’d read, somewhere on the internet, once, about grief. And yes, he knew no-one had died and it wasn’t really that bad, but he’d read the steps that you’re meant to go through. He couldn’t exactly remember what they all were now, but he was pretty sure that Dad was anger and Mum was depression.

For a long time, he realised, he had been guilt. 

Then Mum came in and shouted. He knew it wasn’t her shouting at him, but the shock of it made him nearly drop the card. She asked him what he was doing, and he told her simply that he was burning something. He was glad that she didn’t ask what, even though he had already prepared a lie about pages for his scrapbook.

The lying made him feel guilty too. 

Mum told him he should probably stop because he was going to make the house smell. Then she left. Arthur watched the word ‘Mum’ turn grey and float away as ashes. That was something he was sure would never happen, at least. Mum was always going to be there for him. 

So why couldn’t Dad be? Arthur didn’t really think it was a problem with him so much as it was a problem with Dad, but sometimes he felt like he was caught in the middle of a war that he had caused with his own stupidity. He wasn’t stupid, not really, but Dad never seemed to know that. Dad never seemed to even try and know it. 

He wasn’t quite sure which thought had made the tears well up unavoidably, but he let them run freely down his face as the burning orange line came closer and closer to his fingers. Why couldn’t they be a normal family? He knew he was being quite unfair, and he knew that there wasn’t really such a thing, but then he thought again about Timmy’s perfect Christmases and had to swallow a sob.

He didn’t want Mum to know he was crying. He didn’t want any of this to be happening at all. He wished that Mum and Dad had never married, he wished that they had liked each other. He wished that he didn’t feel like the reason that they had stayed. 

He wished for snow. If he closed his eyes hard enough, he could imagine a happy Christmas with lots of songs and smiles. He really wished for smiles. He missed seeing Mum smile. 

The card was tiny in his hand now. He held it for as long as he could, until it really was going to singe his fingers, then let the scrap go, caught in the wind to vanish. He shut the window and went back to his bed, holding Big Bear close to him again. _Metaphor_, that was what he had just done. He’d let the card go to ashes just like everything around him was doing. 

And maybe that was what acceptance was all about. Letting things just turn to ashes and watching them fly away. Maybe that was how new starts began.


End file.
